


(Almost) Cooking Lobster

by adronitis (orphan_account)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Actually ignore my tags., Domestic, Humor, I'm probably not humorous enough for a humor tag., M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-01
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-12-13 15:43:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/825978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/adronitis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Is this some kind of romantic comedy trope that I’ve missed out on or something? Put a man and a woman in a room with a lobster and boom, you have a good scene?" — Lawrence Dai, <a href="http://www.lawrenceandjulieandjulia.com/2010/12/day-9-are-lobsters-really-that-hard-to.html">Day 9 of The Lawrence/Julie & Julia Project</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	(Almost) Cooking Lobster

**Author's Note:**

> You could [go to my tumble log](http://adronitis.tumblr.com/post/51884126523/ive-been-away-watching-entire-seasons-of-b-grade) to understand more of why I did this.
> 
> I simply did it because I can, though. (◡‿◡✿)

” _Go on…_ ” Derek turns his head slowly to where Stiles is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with him. His wondrous eyebrows ascend so far up his forehead that Stiles is afraid they’ll merge with his hairline. The boy is worrying at his bottom lip while darting his gaze between the werewolf and bag of lobsters in the sink.

When Stiles’s fingers begin to wring the hem of his shirts, Derek finally gives him a curt response, “No.”

“Awww come on!” Derek is backing away from the sink and moving around the kitchen to pull the rest of the groceries out of paper bags. Stiles crowds up behind him by the fridge as Derek bends over to put away the sticks of butter that are already starting to sweat.

“No,” Stiles waits a beat and is about to speak when Derek continues, “ _You_  were the one who wanted to cook lobster for the pack.  _Not_   _me_.”

“Yeah, but  _you’re_  the one who’s gonna be grilling them!” A lemon goes sailing through the air, ricocheting off the faucet and overhead cupboards before Derek catches it.

Never having taken his eyes off of Stiles’, Derek reaches for the boy’s hand and roughly pushes the lemon into it, “So I’ll just  _grill them_ , then. No big deal.”

“NO BIG— UGH!” The boy pointedly keeps his flailing arms far away from the groceries strewn across the kitchen island now, much to Derek’s relief. “DEREK, IT’S CRUEL!”

He feels the grind of his molars as he scowls at the insufferable teen, “Then what do you want, Stiles?”

Stiles slumps against the kitchen island, all the fight going out of him as his glazed eyes studies the sink across from him. After slowly inhaling and exhaling, he responds with his voice quiet but firm, “We  _have_  to kill them.”

Derek’s eyebrows climb even further up his forehead as his voice breaks in disbelief, “ _We_?”

Without averting his gaze from the writhing mass of shellfish, Stiles nods minutely, “ _Together_.”

“No.”

Stiles jumps at the rapid rejection, turning his entire body towards Derek’s, hoping it fully conveys his hurt, “Awww COME ON!”

“You said you knew what you were doing,” Derek’s tone is harsh and biting, but he assures a already-anxious Stiles by moving closer and placing his warm hands on his hips, “I was in the frozen foods aisle when you wandered over to the seafood display and  _for some reason_  decided cooking lobster would be a good idea, remember? I asked you if you were sure, you said you’d watched videos about this kind of thing.  _Well_ …?”

Stiles reverts to nibbling on his lower lip, leaving it red and raw, “ _Yeah_ … but, the video was barely ninety seconds long. Hardly detailed at all. Also, I thought we’d have more time. I was going to put them in the freezer first, so they would be numb when I…” he trails off and Derek watches, amused, at the way Stiles mimes holding a knife and chopping downwards with it.

Derek reels Stiles in, pulling him tight against his own body so he can line his mouth up with the boy’s ear. Huffing out hot breaths over the shell of the boy’s ear, Derek eventually whispers, “You know I want to help you… but you fought me on making tonight’s dinner surf  _and_  turf, so you get to kill them  _all by yourself_.”

Pushing at his shaking shoulders, Stiles glares at the man and sneers at his poor attempt at controlling his laughter. He yanks an oven mitt from a hook on the wall and pulls it on, “ _Fine!_  I’ll do it by myself, because I can. Do it by myself, that is. I can do it by myself. This, right here? Looks like a job for me. Yup, just me. Me, myself, and I. You know what the doctor ordered for these lobsters? That’s right, Stiles is just what the doctor ord—”

“ _Please stop_ ,” Derek’s body language paints him as miserable though his face retains all the amusement he feels from Stiles’ pain.

Derek is leaning against the counter, with his hip inches away from the sink. He watches idly as Stiles inches closer with his oven mitt clad hand cautiously raised in front of him.

The nervous energy is buzzing like an electric current just beneath Stiles’ skin. He focuses on the memory of the summer he spent in Maine, when he was eleven. He was eating lobster tails bathed in butter while sitting on the edge of a dock. Red, white, and blue fireworks were lighting up the sky in short bursts. A cob of corn on his lap rolled off into the lake below, then, when he absent-mindedly jerked his knee.

Stiles refocuses, looking down to find himself holding one of the lobsters up. He starts to think about how he thankfully can’t feel a thing with the oven mitt on when a wandering antenna scrapes lightly across the bare skin of his other wrist. His reaction reminds him of five years ago when that cob of corn had rolled away as a result of his knee-jerk.

The lobster goes flying through the air.

Derek leans back to avoid it and watches in slack-jawed, wide-eyed horror as the crustacean whizzes past him. Stiles is flailing and screaming at a significantly-higher-than-usual pitch. He quickly shuts his mouth though, just as the slow-motion disaster is punctuated by a loud clack of shell against tile.

Derek turns to the boy, feeling, for the lack of a better word, shell-shocked. His mental filter fails him and he blurts out the first thing on his mind, “Talk to him, you speak shellfish.”

Stiles looks stunned. He looks dazedly at the tiny bit of lobster tail poking out from the shadowy space between the fridge and wall. He finally looks up at Derek, feeling his lips curl at the absurdity of the moment, “Maybe if I put a little dish of butter sauce here with a nutcracker it’ll, run out the other side, you know?”

The oven mitt slips off of Stiles’ hand as his arm hangs limply by his side. Derek pushes off the counter and takes a step towards the boy, grinning when he notices Stiles’ small smile, “We should’ve gotten steaks, ‘cause they don’t have legs, they don’t run around.”

Stiles ducks his head down and buries it in his hands, letting out a bellowing groan. Derek takes another step, reaching down for the oven mitt and tossing it onto the kitchen island behind Stiles. He rests his hands on the boy’s shoulders and waits for him to look up at him, greeting his pout with a barely subdued smirk. He steps back, moving to the fridge, picking up the lobster by it’s tail, “If you go set up the grill right now, I could probably have these ready by the time the local pack of hungry teenage werewolves shows up.”

“But we can’t just grill the—”

“I’ll handle it,” Derek tosses the lobster back into the sink and turns back, returning his hands to Stiles’ shoulders, “Okay? Let me handle it.”

This time Stiles deflates at the touch, finally releasing the tension that had been building since the bag of lobsters landed with a clunk in the sink. He stands a little taller after a moment, huffing in agitation, “I’m not weak or anything, you know. I could kill them. I wanted to but—”

“It’s okay, Stiles, I don’t think you’re weak.”

“Good, because I’m not!”

“Hey, the only reason I’m remotely okay with doing this is because I killed my first rabbit when I was four. You’re not weak, Stiles. I’m just… a werewolf.” Derek shrugs his shoulders in a gesture that screams humble-brag, “I’m an unreasonably high standard to place yourself against.”

“You ate bunnies when you were  _four_?!”

“ _That’s_  what you got out of that?”

“I’ve decided to ignore all signs of your ridiculous ego until it simply goes away. So yeah.” Derek squints his eyes at Stiles, who ignores him and continues, “I’ve made a lot more progress than you’d think.”

The boy smiles crookedly at him, swooping in to peck him on the lips before heading out to the backyard.

**Author's Note:**

> I love Annie Hall.  
> I love that Lawrence blogged about the Annie Hall lobster scene in relation to the Julie & Julia one.  
> I love the idea that secretly Derek and Stiles watch Woody Allen films while cuddling and quote them to each other constantly.  
> I love the idea that the pack probably has no clue and spends sleepless nights trying to figure out why Stiles spent an hour at dinner laughing after Scott asks if he'd really killed the lobsters himself and Derek replies with "What did you think we were gonna do? Take them to the movies?"
> 
> Phew, I'm glad I got that out of my system. NOW, ONTO OTHER HEADCANONS!
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
